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Grace Batson, Chair of CAFFE, and Director of Elections Glasspole Brown
Grace Baston, chair of the election watchdog group Citizens Action for Free and Fair Elections [CAFFE] was forced to intervene after some observers were barred from monitoring the counting at polling stations on Monday evening.
CAFFE, a Jamaican organization, has observed elections since its inception in 1997.
Mrs Baston said about 20 per cent of observers were advised by representatives of the Electoral Office of Jamaica that they had to leave the precincts.
She expressed distress at the wide scale nature of this disruption of CAFFE's traditional work.
She said there been a challenge in the past at some counting centres getting the electoral officers to allow the observers to stay for the counting of the votes, "where some officials get confused about what the role of the CAFFE observer is and don't allow them in," but according to her, this time the problem was far more widespread, with about 40 of the 300 observers being barred from observing the vote count.
She said she was therefore forced to reach out to the Electoral Office of Jamaica for a resolution.
In response, Director of Elections Glasspole Brown told the report from CAFFE on the day's proceedings will inform the Electoral Office of the gaps and how to address them.
"We need to sit down with CAFFE again, in terms of looking at the relationship, going forward," he said.
Certainly, from ECJ/EoJ end, we want CAFFE to be part of the process, beause we put a lot of emphasis and a lot of focus on the report from CAFFE after an exercise like this," he added.
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